This is a blog centering on Dr. Petrosino's course at The University of Texas at Austin entitled " EDC 365E Project Based Instruction in STEM Education." This is the capstone course in the UTeach Natural Sciences professional development sequence. It also serves as a forum for Dr. Petrosino's thoughts and ideas on Project Based Instruction and educational reform.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Class Meeting 10: Wed Feb 24, 2010 Driving Questions

Ms. Ekberg started class by asking student the purpose behind creating a driving question. Students discussed that the driving questions serve as a starting point for their final projects. Ms. Ekberg then continued on with an activity from Monday, where students did a gallery walk of the driving questions posted on the wall, and formed groups of 2-3 based on questions they wanted continue pursuing and taking down the driving question posters they wanted to eliminate.

After students formed groups, Ms. Ekberg passes out a worksheet entitled, “Prompts for developing well-constructed driving questions”, which comes from p. 87 of the Krajcik, Cerniak, and Berger (2003) book, Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms: A Project-based Approach. Students are to used this framework to finalize one driving questions on a fresh sheet of poster paper, and then post it on the wall for feedback from the rest of the class.

Students then walk around the room reading the new driving questions, adding comments with post-its and making sure to be constructive with their thoughts about the driving questions, utilizing the Krajcik, Cerniak, and Berger PBL framework. When students are done reading through their critique, they work on refining their question. Then, they designate a recorder to post their new question onto the course BlackBoard discussion board.

Students then select a common weekly meeting time, and upload a group contract outlining each group member’s responsibilities to each other, and attaching it to their BlackBoard posting of the driving question. Students then agree to meet at time

About Me

Dr. Petrosino is a graduate of Columbia University's Teachers College (MA, 1990) and received his PhD from Vanderbilt University (1998). He completed a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin where he was a member of the National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science (NCISLA). In 1999 he accepted a Professorship at the University of Texas and received tenure in 2004. He holds the Elizabeth G. Gibb Endowed Fellowship in Mathematics Education. Dr. Petrosino has published over 20 peer reviewed journal articles, made over 100 national and international conference presentations and has supervised a dozen doctoral dissertations. He has received over 30 million dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education and the McDonnel Foundation for Cognitive Studies. He is a founding professor of the nationally recognized UTeach Natural Sciences preservice teacher education program. From July 2007 to August 2009 he served as the Assistant to the Superintendent in the Hoboken School District.